Baby Bunting and Eco Brazilwood

As promised some photos of the tiny artists I had the pleasure of meeting last Friday (and their mums!)

To make life easier for small hands the bunting triangle shapes were drawn onto calico by mum's before the children painted them. We had patriotic red, white and blue fabric paint with extra gold and sparkles applied with glue once everything was dry.

 

Yesterday was spent at the studio and I took down this jar of Brazilwood liquid (left from the Natural Dye Day) Warming inside was a ball of 1/4" calico strips I found inside a bag of donated fabrics. It had been inside the jar for about two weeks.

 It had a little wash and was wrapped on a dryer in the sun. As it dried it turned a beautiful salmon pink with hints of purple. I love the fact that even on this the colour isn't uniform.

I have got something else bubbling up in the pan but Blogger is refusing to upload any more photos to this post. Rather than get cross (me!) my photos and I will be back soon x

Madder and Brazilwood dyeing results

I took the mordanted fabrics out of the jar about three weeks ago now and was pleased with the results. The darker fabric in the photo below is silk scrim.

I will think about how I do this again as I did have to pick out lots of the small root and bark pieces from the scrim. I want to dye with Logwood next.

There was still lots of colour left in the water and after mordanting, I put the above fabrics back. It again sat on top of my wood burning stove  for about ten days heating up each day.. I do have some photos of the washed and dried fabrics but can't find the lead to download them onto the computer at the moment. Normally when I dye with either madder root or Brazilwood I would use 50g-100g of each per 100g of fabric (hands up as I am never that accurate but try!!) Below is all the root and wood pieces after rinsing from the final batch of fabrics, I haven't measured this but judging it by eye tells me that I used about a third of my normal amount.

Eco Natural Dyeing with Madder and Brazilwood

All last year I wanted to do some"eco" dyeing, the type that you put your bark or leaves into a jar in the sun and wait. It didn't happen and I sat over Christmas looking at my wood buring stove wondering what if I  put a pot of something on top to simmer away. Last week after I mordanted some cotton and silk scrim I scrunched them up into a large Kilner glass jar and sprinkled madder root and Brazilwood chips between the layers.

I then filled the jar with just enough cold water to cover the fibres.You can see from below that the pink started to come through virtually immediately.

It has sat in a pan of water to gently heat each evening this week when the fire has been lit.

I think I will take it out this weekend. I am hoping for some texture in the cloth and darker shades where the roots/chips have been touching the cloth. I am going to keep the liquid to use again which should give me some paler shades to work with as well.